The Life of Sir Rowland Hill and the

WESTMINSTER ABBEY. 433
how the swift glances of the mind never rest, even
amidst the rush of feelings strong as these.
I saw my children, too. W gazed
at me with
wonder in his dark eyes, E with pleasure at
discovering me. ... At the grave,
as I looked
down on the coffin and read, 'Sir Rowland Hill.
Born December 3rd, 1795. Died August 27, 1879,'
I thought how much there was contained within those
dates. The whole life of the dead man seemed to
rise before me, from his childhood at Wolverhampton,
when he played with her who was one day to be
his wife and was now his widow ; through his hard
struggles, his poverty, the neglect under which he
had suffered, up to the present glorious day when his
countrymen
thus honoured him. ... I found the
tears rising in my eyes ; but they were not so much
tears for him, as tears over our common humanity and
mortality.
The music flooded the soul with the sense
of man's nothingness and his short stay on earth. I
never once, as I looked down into the grave, thought
that the dead man might now be living in some other
world. Had he been a great writer, that thought
would have come most naturally to me. But
'
or-
ganisation is my forte,' he was wont to say ; and what
place is there for organisation in heaven ? His, indeed,
was a mind whose work lay in this working-day
world. And yet, had I remembered his love of astro-
nomy, I might have pictured him to myself as learning
'
with delight the secret of the stars. Organisation is
some one else s forte,' he might now be softly whisper-
ing to himself."
We saw him then laid to rest in the little chapel in
the venerable Abbey,
beneath the statue of Watt. A
memorial will one day be set up in this quiet spot, to
show the stranger and the passer-by where Rowland
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